what you did you take of these decisions by brenner, which we had heard had been agreed to in washington before he arrived, and the impression that i have on this you wish to correct this is that we had barely been consulted on them at all? >> i referred earlier to the february, an implicit in that paper as far as de- baathification is concerned, although that phrase does not appear, we wanted the iraqi technocrats to be available to administer the system. as i understood it, baath party membership was a requirement to have a job under saddam. we said that there would be people who had joined the party because they've wanted to be civil servants, not because they necessarily were enthusiastic supporters of saddam hussein. we thought that there ought to be a distinction between those who were enthusiastic supporters and those who simply join the party in order to gain a position, not least because we anticipated some of the difficulties that ensued in administering our rack in the aftermath. the argument arises in relation to the army, which i mentioned earlier, a force of stability. we h